Slow Exchange Backup

[adgat2001]

I'm getting a backup rate of only 55-75MB/min on the Exchange server. The other servers have a rate in the 700mb/min range. I'm using BackupExec 12.5 in a Windows 2003 environment. I've tried updating the NIC drivers, installing all the hotfixes, restarting the server. None of it has helped. The strange things is that the first night after I upgrade to 12.5 the exchange server had a backup rate of about 250MB/min. Not very fast but at least it finished in about 4 hours. Now it takes about 21. I didn't change anything from the first night to the second. Any ideas?

[Colin_Weaver]

 Are you running Incremental Exchange Backups with GRT enabled? or just Full Backups?
If only running Full Backups, then this won't help.
If running Policy Based Daily  Incrementals with Weekly Fulls, turn of the GRT option on the Incremental Backup Template but leave it enabled on the full. Also make sure your Exchange Deleted Item Retention Period (MS Setting not BEWS) is set to longer than the period between your full backups.
If is is this you are experiencing then it is something Symantec are aware of and looking into

Note I am assuming you are not doing legacy mailbox backups as this will be incredibly slow anyway.

[Hemant_Jain]

Are you using legacy mailbox backup? Please go to Backup selections, and see if exchange mailboxes are selected for backup, or is it just the mailbox store? Legacy mailbox backup or individual mailbox can make it very slow. It is recommended to backup only the mailbox store and not mailboxes for better performance. With Backup Exec, we have the GRT feature which enables individual mailbox restore from database backup.

Please mark it a solution, if this is useful.
Thanks

[adgat2001]

I'm only backing up the Information Store.

[adgat2001]

I'm doing full backups of the information store.

[CraigV]

Hi adgat2001,

Try updating the device drivers for BE 12.5, and then see if this affects your backup speed.
NIC-wise, if Exchange sits on another server you can always make sure the ports on your NICs and switches are hard-coded to the maximum speed, eg. 1000MB FULL.
This is also a good read:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/231488.htm

Lastly, try pushing out the RAWS agent again to that Exchange server, especially if you've updated hotfixes on your backup server. This sometimes adds functionality to RAWS which needs to be re-pushed out. I have seen updates for RAWS after installing BE 12.5 SP2 for example on my backup server.

[Hemant_Jain]

Please see if there are any events generated during the backup on the BE server or Exchange server. Also, trying a backup to disk would be a good idea for a test, as that would give us a reason to rule out tape drives. If you have an alternate tape device, we can try that too. There can be two reasons for this slow backup, one catalog building when doing tape backup might be causing this. Backup to disk, if faster, would tell us that Exchange may not be at fault. Also, update the NIC drivers on Exchange server, and hope you have done a reboot of Exchange server also?

Thanks